Disconnecting a gas appliance

Moving home soon.
Need to disconnect two gas appliances - a cooker and a gas fire.
The gas company told me I can do it myself, simply turn of the gas supply at the
mains and
disconnect the appliances. Let the room venitalte afterwards to allow remant gas
in the pipes to
clear.
I can do it easily enough, but is it legal?
(obviously I will pay for a registered gas engineer to install the appliances at
the new address)

.....
Well if you start by asking the Gas Co. but then get a different answer by
asking complete strangers here I would have thought it best to go down the
pub and enquire there because someone is bound to have an opinion, then you
will have a decider - two out of three. No need to have anything in writing,
go ahead and take a hack saw to the gas pipe confident that your research
has been thorough.
Tim W

Pointing to a letter telling you to break the law would be no
defence. Actually, I find it very hard to imagine a gas company
would give any advice at all, except get a Gas Safe/Corgi to
come and do it.

There's no reason the OP should believe me over the others, and
I'm not a gas engineer. However, if I've sewn the seeds of doubt
in the OP's mind, that's all I can do.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

One of the applicances (gas fire) has a screw down connector that has a
rubber/silicone compresion
gasket to ensure a seal.
As far as I am aware neither appliance has a self sealing coupling.
However, I shall check before attempting anything.
Thank you for the clear feedback.

That sounds like a gas restrictor valve. It's not meant to be a
DIY connector, but it's quite common to disconnect at that point.
You remove the top cap screw, then close off the screw valve inside,
and then replace the top cap screw. This normally seems to be
regarded as properly capped off, as tools are required to reopen it.
Check the valve is fully sealed off as described below.

Cookers often have a flexible hose with a self-sealing baynet connector
fixed to the wall. You are allowed to disconnect that. You'll get a
little whiff of gas which comes out of the hose. Using a wet soapy
finger, draw a bubble across the baynet socket after you've unplugged
the cooker hose, and make sure it isn't growing due to the connector
seal not sealing. Sometimes these don't seal perfectly first time,
and you may be able to make it seal by pressing your finger in the
end to momentarily to open and then reseal the connector. If that
still doesn't work, turn off the gas and call a Gas Safe (Corgi in NI)
plumber to replace the connector, or to remove and cap it if you
aren't going to use it again.
Note that cookers sometimes have a flexible hose which is permanently
attached at both ends too, so it may not have a baynet connector.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

Back again, you should be able to gain access to your gas meter and in the
box there you will find a fairly large turn cock; turn it off before you
start and again label it to say there are appliances removed.

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